Marfy 3074 Flared skirt- A MYSTerious thing

Scanned picture from catalogue 2013/2014

This is probably the first time I used a free pattern from the catalogue and that it is the first catalogue I ever purchased.  I like getting free stuff with purchase, I just find the pattern pieces to be a bit of a maze, but I persisted.

First off, if you have been following me in any previous posts I LOVE SKIRTS!!!  This one has the right amount of flare and length, so I decided to scratch one off my wishlist and use this one instead. Also, skirts are so easy to make and aside from a basic shirt this has the least amount of pattern pieces, which can qualify as a quick and dirty project.

As for an embroidery project as I always plan, this black skirt inspiration came from a very favourite game of mine.  The Myst Series. (If you haven't played this game you should it is awesome!)  The idea presented such a good contrast of colours on a black skirt I couldn't resist.  Let's have a look at what I plan to put on the skirt:



From Uru Complete Chronicles -desert blue flowers in the Cleft (rainy version)

This is my Relto Age from Complete Chronicles here with the blue flower and
the red butterfly Relto pages added. A better view of the flowers



Red Butterfly from Kadish Tolesa ( said: KAY-DISH TOLL-EE-SAH) emptied vault

White-lavender Butterfly from the rest age Direbo(said: DEE-RAY-BOW) in Myst V
This one is also found by the entrance to D'ni by the Cleft in New Mexico

These should provide ample work during my free time.

And, I did a little bit of research on the blue wild flowers that could possibly grow in the state of New Mexico desert, and the only one that came close to the description and illustration in the Myst-Book of Atrus was the wild flower Eriastrum eremicum.  The pictures I found were the same colour as in Uru Complete Chronicles in the Cleft.  I think I got the right idea here.

Eriastrum eremicum.  

As for the fictional butterflies in Kadish Tolesa and Direbo, I will just have to embroider them as is.  I could not find any real-life counterparts right off, but, the game version will work. (Any suggestions to those who do not live in North America?)

As for the pattern itself I know, I can find a hundred patterns with the same flare, but since I already had it here when my catalogue came, I decided this was the way to go.

If you have access to the multi sized pattern sheet or you are planning to order it as is, you should have 6 pieces.

Front cut 1 on fold
Back cut 1 on fold
Side Front cut 2 on the straight grain
Side Back cut 2 on the straight grain
*Waist band front  cut 1 on fold in double on the straight grain
*waist band back cut 1 on fold in double on the straight grain

You'll also need:
1.8 m of 1.44 m (55") wide fabric
Invisible zipper 18 cm long
Interfacing for waist band(lightweight fusible)

I traced out a size 50 because I only wanted a 1 cm seam allowance and a 3 cm hem.  I wanted this size because I didn't want it to be too snug, plus it is a casual skirt, not for work.

* Waist band construction is variable.  You can make your own by a continous strip or like me you can put them in seamed sections.

Step 1: Layout

Front, Back ,Side Front, Side Back pieces

Step 2: Front-Side Front

With right sides together, sew the seam with the E match point.  You should use the pattern piece labelled E-F at the top for your side front piece. Press seam

Sewn in order from L to R
FE-E-EF

Step 3: Back-Side Back

With right sides together, sew the seam with the D match point.  The side-back piece is labelled D-F at the top. Press seam out.

Sewn in order from L to R
FD-D-DF

At this point you want to finish your seams E and D, so there should be 4 of them.

Step 3: Side Front-Side Back

With right sides together, sew the F match point seam on the right side.  For the F seam on the left side, leave the seam open above the notch to install the zipper.

(If you don't plan on any embroidery, skip this step and do what you want.)

If you are not lining your skirt(ie myself), you will want to serge each side of your side-front side -back pieces first before sew your seam and before you install your zipper for your left side.  This ensures that your zipper has a straight finished edge for better more easier installation.  Plus, it looks a bit less home-sewn.

For my own purposes, I sewed the F seam on the right side, pressed, and serged shut.  I serged the F seam separately on the left side of each front and back aspects but I have not sewn the F seam yet.  I also serged the top and the hem, as to get my shirt prepared for the embroidery.

Embroidery plans:

I need to use one of my butterfly tracing for the red butterfly and the white-purple one.  It looks as though they have slightly different wing structures, so, I will just need to translate that onto my fabric with matching thread colours.
I looked in my Butterflies of British Columbia and will:

1. use the Family Pieridae (Whites and Sulphurs)  for the Direbo butterfly
2. use the Family Nymphalidae ( Brush footed ) for the Kadish Tolesa butterfly

Next, I will also need to trace the growth habit of the blue flowers, the leaf structure and the flower petals.  I should only use maybe two tracings and then I will use my own variation of branches, flower clusters etc.

Also, let's keep in mind that these flowers are meant to be ground cover type flowers from the game. This is also the part that saves time too, since you don't have to cover the skirt 100% from top to bottom.  I think I should only cover the skirt with 1/4 to 1/3 the distance of flowers from the bottom hem up.

I really should stress this while we are talking about placing designs on skirts.  When things start looking "silly or ghastly" we should always remember a couple of things:

1. DO NOT draw attention to suggestible areas in a bad way on your clothing pieces in the front of a skirt.
2. DO NOT draw attention to the rear in a bad way.  It can start to make people laugh.

I traced some butterfly shapes from my book

Yep, this is the portion of the project where it slows right down.  Had I only wanted a plain skirt I would finish it in 2 days, but I love a challenge and I may be the only one in my town with this design on my skirt!
I love originality!

First frame completed on CF of skirt at hemline

This is the first frame completed.  This one always takes the longest.

Here are some steps to ensure that your involved embroidery project doesn't get overwhelming and gets thrown on the "LATER" pile...possibly for a year or two.

1. Put skirt together and adjust your fit before closing the zipper side. (Have skirt as one long open sheet) 
2. Finish all seams and serge hem raw edge(don't fold or stitch hem yet)
3. Baste your hemline and any other sewing lines for seams, darts, pleats to establish "out of bounds" areas
4. Plan your design before you dive in.  This may be the part where you can bite off more than you can chew.
5. Do as much as you can handle at one sitting.  Take breaks. Do what you can when watching a movie.
6. Be determined to finish
7. You can embroider over seams if you think your body mass won't fluctuate   Keep in mind that once you do embroider over a seam, it's a done deal.
8. Do not work too hard as eye strain can set in, so pace yourself.
9. If you have an embroidery machine disregard most of the aforementioned steps.  Turn on your machine and have a nap. ( To me this is not my focus)

In choosing my colours, I really go back to my favourite standby of all time.  I usually use DMC embroidery floss because they are durable, colourfast, and have standardized dye lots that make it real easy when you need to go out and buy another skein because the colours don't change, and they are also really inexpensive and quite build able in terms of layering to create textures.  Now, I am not saying that other threads can't achieve this, others are much better actually, but on everyday clothes, DMC is very versatile.

For my flowers, stems and leaves:

Blue:  813

Green: 471

Maroon: 903

Purple: 550

Yellow: 3382

Sixth Frame completed

Drawing completed for the Side Back right side
This will take up two frames to complete

Most of the time, drawing vegetation can be whatever you want in whatever typical growth pattern it can come in.  I also think that one should put variation into the growth habit of flowers because nature never behaves the way an embroidery machine computer algorithms do, but fall under the laws of physics instead.(This is one of my major beefs with machine work. A person's skills and imagination wins every time!).  Since my work is on a smaller scale I lose some definition.

Here I chose the vegetation to be a bit more sparse as I head towards the centre back, only because I figured that under the sun the vegetation can be struggling with little water available, I hope I accomplished that here.
In complete contrast to this, where I live we have a problem of too much rain and other forms of precipitation, and when I make a design of flowers from here, I might want to create the image that they are weighed down by rain, not growing to find a source of more water.

Frames finished but stem shapes hae changed due to marker rubbing off

Flowers on the CB piece

Last flowers on Side back right side

Now, onto the butterflies!!!!

I figured I would embroider from L to R and then start over with other frames that only concern the two different types of butterflies.  Keep in mind that there will not be as many butterflies as there are flowers in this project, and I figure that I should do about 5 to 7 butterflies for the entire skirt.  You actually know when you are DONE!!

Anyway, on closer inspection of what my monitor captured with the highest quality resolution, the colours for the Kadish Tolesa butterfly revealed more orange than red, but it appears that red has highlights, and here are the colours for this butterfly:

DMC

844 -dark gray, 318-cement, 825-royal blue, 762-silver gray, 350-pumpkin orange, 321-fire engine red

First Kadish butterfly done on CB

Now, in taking these pictures, I can't believe how hard it was to photo this overall red butterfly.  It is gray here as usual, and lighting kind of bites, so it did not turn out true to form.
I also discovered that the orange colour should be used as a highlight here as I find this colour generally disgusting, so I have to be careful here.

I also see from my game pictures that the butterflies have no bodies and therefore I have no clue as what to do, however, I used complimentary colours for the head, abdomen and thorax.  I also thought that looking at real pictures I have taken of resident butterflies (cabbage whites-yay) that their bodies are kind of fuzzy, which tells me that a Ghirodes knot(aka Turkey stitch) is in order here as the size and space can provide for such true-to-life adaptations. (Can a machine do that? ....NO!)

Now onto the Direbo butterfly.

In looking at my game picture of this butterfly, I can see that it is mostly light lavender, white and some charcoal gray.   The great thing about this part is that I know I am close to being done.
I didn't realise that this project would be so involved but hey, whatever.

In choosing the colours for this thing I picked from my stash:

DMC:
762, 3743, 318, 340, 844

I only made one of these, as I began to think that the lighter coloured buterfly was starting to clash and any more would make it look gaudy, but if I change my mind in the near future, I can change that...no sweat.



Step 4: Sewing the left side zipper seam or F match point.

 With right sides together, sew the F seam up until the notch.  Back stitch this to reinforce where the bottom of the zipper will be installed.  Press seam out.


Step 5:  Installing the zipper. (choose an invisible zipper-18 cm long)

By now, I have this stage of the game down pat, but, using an invisible zipper really makes it look more professional, plus, there aren't really any weird overlaps to deal with etc.

In using a standard invisible zip, I know that a 1 cm seam allowance works out great and I don't have to align the serging edge to accommodate the standard 1.5 cm seam allowance used with bought patterns, so I can align this with the edge of the fabric.

Place the top of the zip to align with the top edge and side edge and baste into place before you stitch permanent stitches.  Pins don't really do the trick.

Baste zip into place placing the top of the zipper flush with the top of the skirt

Step 6: Waistband sections


In this step, which I didn't show on the layout, in looking at the picture, even from my catalogue image that the waist band looks like there are seams in the Back piece to each Side Back, and the front looks like it was cut on the fold. Now, my catalogue came with two pattern pieces which in measuring 50 times over, I decided to put them all in sections, so I used my tailored measurements plus my seam allowance, I didn't use the pattern waistband pieces but made sure to extend the width by a factor of 2 times as it says to fold in double.

I also extended the overlap on the left side at 2.5 cm sewed on a buttonhole and button and that finished that.
Q: Which way do we fold in double?

A: The width because we need the other half of the width to serve as a facing on the inside of the skirt to conceal raw edges.

Take note of where the notch is for the size and which corresponding match point letter goes with the waist band to match up with your side back or side front seams on the skirt if you are using the pattern pieces, I just made sure my seams matched up.

Once your waistband pieces are cut out use this template to cut out your interfacing. May I suggest fusible type or use waist band interfacing?

With right sides together, matching seams etc, sew the waistband to the skirt. Press the seam towards the waistband. Be sure to sew your zipper folded in so that when you turn your waistband rght side out, it won't contort.

As you can see the interfacing and seams to the waistband, press under
your seam allowance (mine 1 cm) on the top of waistband
If you press under, your won't need seam binding

Now that you have sewn the waistband to the skirt, with right sides together, sew the ends of your waistband just like you would with a neckband making sure both sides are even. I have my overlap on my left side so I sew my 1 cm from that end whereas the right side is sewn flush with the zipper.


Step 7:  Hem finish and Tweaks

I finished the hem as I always do just as handstich a blind hem by pressing under 3 cm.
When the waistband is folded and pressed to the inside, there won't be any need to seam bind the raw edges.



See how the zipper was sewn folded inward so that when the zip is closed it won't twist?
I top stitched the bottom of the waist band



That is it.

 

Finally, 2 months later...